Alfred Schwartz Barnes

Alfred Schwartz Barnes
File:Barnes, Alfred Schwartz.jpg
Born	1868
Died	1949
Residence	Redcliffe, Orpington, Kent Tudor House, Woodstock Road, Oxford [1921] Dormers, Holwood, Park Avenue, Farnborough, Kent [1929]
Society Membership membership ordinary fellow elected_AI 1915.03.26 societies Prehistoric Society of East Anglia

Notes

House Notes

1915.03.04 proposed by J. Reid Moir, seconded by Henry Forbes

Notes From Elsewhere

Alfred Schwartz was born in 1868 in Sevenoaks but seems to have moved to Germany shortly afterwards. His father is described in his Who Was Who entry as 'John Schwartz of Sevenoaks' so he must have had English connections. Alfred left Germany during the First World War and came to England as a refugee. For obvious reasons, at that time he added a second surname of Barnes. He was educated in Eastbourne and at King's College, University of London. In 1902 he married Maria Alexandra Lavers-Smith of Ditton Hill, Surrey; they had two daughters.
By profession he was an electrical engineer. For five years he was the assistant to Professor Henry Robinson of Westminster, designing and erecting power stations for St Pancras in London among other places. From 1895 he was acting Head of Electrical Technology at Chelsea Polytechnic. In 1901 he was appointed Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering at the School of Technology, Manchester and in 1905 he was appointed Professor of Electrical Engineering at Manchester University. He published many books on his subject.
Towards the end of his life he lived in Farnborough, Kent and this seems to have been his residence when he donated artefacts to the Pitt Rivers Museum and when he worked on displays. He died in 1949.
His principal hobby was archaeology, listed in his Who Was Who entry. Other members of this family seem also to have been interested in the subject. His elder brother Ernest Justus Schwartz's collection of shell beads was given to Ipswich Museum in 1932
Barnes was very interested in the techniques of stone-working. He was also interested in the eolith debate, when scholars debated whether the so-called eoliths were manufactured or found objects. He carried out many experiments into stone tools and left stones used in his research to the Museum. Sadly he never published his research in detail but the further reading list below lists some of the relevant ones.
It is noteworthy that Barnes seems to have had a number of collaborators / fellow researchers including Francis Knowles, Samuel Hazzledine Warren, William Charles Brice, Armand Donald Lacaille, Leon Coutier and others.

Related Material Details

Other Material

PRM: 978 artefacts; papers